Twelve Years' Wilderness
by HoVis
Summary: After twelve long years, her son returns to her, but he is not as he once was. And he really, Martha Kent muses, needs to reevaluate his choice of clothing. Please R and R!


**A/N:** And the serial one-shotter strikes again...! I've been wanting to write this one for quite a while, ever since watching the 'original' movie and wishing to see the scene between Clark Kent and his mother when he finally _returned_ from the Arctic. Somehow, I thought she was the first person he would visit after flying out of the Fortress of Solitude, and I wanted to try and show from Martha's point of view just how much his twelve years with the hologram of Jor-El changed him. I also seem to have a slight addiction to writing from the POV of Martha Kent; I feel she is a very under-used character. I hope that what follows is alright.

**Disclaimer:** I only own the DVD, a slightly embarrassing secret that I keep from my friends.

**Twelve Years' Wilderness**

Her son was gone for twelve years, twelve years of emptiness and gradual acceptance of his absence from her life. She knew that he would return, one day, but was unsure if she would recognise him with failing eyes, or still be able to embrace him with arms that became frailer each year. She missed him, but she missed him without bitterness, knowing that he was doing what he had to do; what had been his destiny ever since he fell from the sky to the bosom of her family, to find his own roots and most of all to find _himself_.

When he returned after an absence of twelve years, she hardly recognised him, but it was not due to failing eyesight or the frailty of her mind, which was still iron-strong, surviving her body's gradual weakening.

It was a quiet night; she had just returned from an evening's card game with Ben Hubbard, a kind man who, if he couldn't replace her Jonathon, was still a far greater comfort than a hot water bottle and a cup of tea in the cold, lonely nights of her old age. The Kent farm was set back from the road as it was, and only their dog (who still missed Clark and whined at his bedroom door from time to time) was there to welcome her home. Yet as she opened the door, she felt a stirring of breeze in the still night and heard a gentle thud beside her. She stood stock still, and heard a person's quiet breathing. Was this how it ended, then?

Then the person spoke, and she recognised the voice with a cry that pulled itself through twelve years of desperate waiting.

"Mom?" The voice said.

"Clark?" She asked, turning slowly, as though dreading that the voice was nothing more than a product of her tired imagination, and that the hope that her son was finally home would vanish as quickly as the evening star in a paling dawn. Yet someone _was_ there – but it did not look like her Clark. This man was tall, his shoulders broad and his gaze clear. Clark – her Clark – was just a little boy. Not to mention the fact that this peculiar apparition was dressed from head to toe in a tight blue _costume_ – surely that was only the word for it – with a red cape and (she frowned slightly, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her) yellow pants. She would have hoped that _Clark_ had more dress-sense than that.

Then he smiled, and she knew it was Clark, for it was the very same smile he had given her the day she and Jonathon had found them, the smile which had bound him to her heart and mother's love irrevocably. The corners of his eyes crinkled and his blue eyes filled with a warmth that seemed to suffuse her cold frame. She shivered slightly at the contrast between the warmth of his smile and the chill of his night, and his smile dropped into a look of concern.

"You're cold, Mom – we should get inside."

And yet still she stood there, unable to take her eyes of his face. Bizarrely, whenever she had dreamt of his return – and she had dreamt of it, too often – she had always imagined him returning unchanged, still the uncertain teenager he had been when he had left. But in the twelve years between them now he had grown into a man, his jaw sharply chiselled and his every movement filled with a quiet, frightening confidence. Martha let out a sob.

"Oh, Clark," she said, and pulled him into her arms at last. His body shuddered, as though in sympathy of the pain the last twelve years had held for her.

888

Ever the practical farmer's son, he had whisked her inside then and hastily brewed her a cup of tea, whilst he stirred a coffee for himself (he had always had a curious affinity for the stuff, she remembered vaguely, as though in preparation for what he had sworn would one day be his career as a journalist) and fussed over getting the fire lit. She had barely spoken three words to him, and yet as he sat down opposite her, handing her a steaming mug of tea, they both tried to speak at the same time.

"Where have you -"

"Are you -" They both stopped, and he smiled and nodded graciously.

"You first."

Martha took a deep breath in, oddly comforted by the homely scent of the sweet tea – he had put in an extra spoonful of sugar, she noted as she took a sip, and something else, brandy, perhaps? Did he think she might need the extra support in the conversation that was to follow?

"So, where have you been?" Even to her own ears, her voice sounded forced and cheery. She wondered how it must sound to her son, her beautiful boy who was suddenly a man. It was all too fast and too soon. Twelve years had not been long enough to change him so.

"In the Arctic." He said, ducking his head forward slightly with a bashful smile. "You know – up north." Martha smiled slightly but that, too, was forced, like a smile given at a dinner party where everyone is known but only over a gap of years and old, dusty friendships. "I took the crystal, from the ship in the storm cellar -" he stopped, looking at her carefully. "Are we going to start talking _properly_, Mom?" He asked, and she looked up in surprise. Then again, he had always been perceptive of what people really meant behind their words and false looks; that was why the petty machinations of the high school hierarchy had always hurt him so, perhaps more than it should have done.

"I'm sorry, Clark," she said, then set down her cup and reached out for him, finding even before she did so his hands around hers, enclosing them in his warmth and hugeness. Perhaps she had always remembered him wrongly; perhaps by thinking of him as a small and vulnerable boy had been the only way to fit him in her mind's eye. She said at last what she had been yearning to say since she had set eyes on him.

"But really, Clark, where on earth did you get _that suit?_"

He leant back in his seat, still holding her hands, and laughed, his eyes closing in merriment.

"Believe it or not, Mom," he said, looking at her with an irresistible smile, "this is pretty much all that remains of the clothe-making skills of the planet of Krypton."

Martha suddenly understood why he had added the brandy to her tea. Perhaps he should have just added the tea to the brandy and be done with it.

"Krypton?" She asked lightly, trying to keep from her voice the sudden shock that the open acknowledgement of his alien heritage gave her. They had always known that his "parents weren't from Kansas" – so why now did she feel astonished, afraid, even, to be holding hands with a man from another planet? And did she suddenly see her own son as an alien because he had grown up in the twelve years between them or because she had been merely blinkered before to what he had always been?

"My... home planet." The Last Son of Krypton said, awkwardly, then laughed, releasing her hands and running one through his hair, pulling it out of place and giving him a messy, boyish look she had missed so much. "Though, it doesn't have quite the same feel as this place." He gave her a look, then, and Martha realised she had been a fool to think his vulnerability gone and not just hidden. "I _have_ missed Smallville, Mom, and you most of all."

Martha nodded.

"I know, my boy." She said, and with a long breath let out any trace of the thought that he was alien, or at all different from the way he had been when he had left her twelve years ago. He had grown, was all. "Your planet... why were you...?"

"It was falling apart." Clark said simply. "My – biological father, a man named Jor-El, was a scientist who recognised that Krypton's red sun was about to go nova, but no-one else believed him. He was... ordered to not leave Krypton or to attempt to cause any form of panic. Both he and his wife. But..." he paused, looking a little lost, a lamb sent from another world to the hearth of a humble farm in Kansas, "they made no such order relating to the child his wife had just borne." He looked at Martha with wide eyes. "Me."

Martha let out a slow breath of surprise, as the depth of the sacrifice made by that scientist and his wife revealed itself to her. Indirectly, the gift of life they had made had been given to _her_.

"Oh Clark. They – sent you away, didn't they? To save your life. Their child..."

Clark looked at her hard, then, as though searching for something, some cause for doubt, in her eyes, but he saw nothing but her deep sympathy for those parents, galaxies and years apart from her but bound by one thing; their love for him.

"Yes." He said simply, then gave a small, sad smile. "But they left me something – a crystal, which, when I..." he frowned slightly, "threw it, grew into a... well, what matters is that that crystal contained not only all of the history, knowledge and art of Krypton, but also a recording from my... father. Jor-El."

Martha was ridiculously grateful that he had not called Jor-El his "dad".

"What did it say?"

"It explained... who I was." He looked down at his hands, now in his lap. "That they loved me."

"Of course they did, Clark," Martha said softly, then frowned as a thought she had, strangely, never thought before came to her. "Your father... did he tell you... your birth-name?"

Clark looked at her with eyes that, she now realised, had absorbed a lot more than just the view of the Arctic over the last twelve years. He did not hesitate, as such, but there hung in the air the silent trepidation that always accompanies the impartation of something precious.

"Kal-El." He said at last, then placed a hand over the yellow insignia on his chest. "This is the... symbol of the family of El."

"Funny," said Martha wryly, picking up his empty coffee cup and rising to brew another, "I thought it was an 'S'."

A grin split Clark's face, poor though her attempt at humour had been. She nodded down at the cup in her hands.

"Do you want another?" She asked. "You can change into some... sensible clothes whilst you're waiting though, mind, I'm not sure if your clothes will still fit you. I kept everything in your room just as you left it, give or take a tidy up or two."

Clark leapt up, boundless enthusiasm shining across his impossibly handsome face. Perhaps in high school he had been passed over, but Martha Kent had a mother's prideful fancy that he would soon be battling off eager female admirers from all walks of life.

"Please, Mom, I've missed coffee like nobody's business..." he paused on the threshold to the stairs. "Missed you, too."

Martha raised her eyes to the heavens.

"And I missed you, now, get on, and remember to wear your pants on the _inside_ this time!"

He bounded up the stairs in one leap, cape and all, and Martha could still hear him laughing as she disappeared into the kitchen.

888

Five hours later they had got through five cups of coffee, one small bottle of brandy, six cups of tea and a box of tissues between them, and had raked over memories both old and new. They had spoken of Jonathon, Clark with a gentle awe that proved to Martha that however incredible this 'Jor-El' was in his eyes, the man who had raised him was still to him the one who had taught him love, honour and pride. Both would influence his life from beyond the grave.

Clark had explained to her where his powers came from, she had told him about the various births and deaths – he was delighted to learn that Pete Ross had married and had twin daughters, but distraught to learn of the death of his favourite farm cat – along with her friendship with Ben Hubbard, which he smiled at. She could still remember him telling her that he had spoken to Hubbard and asked him to 'look after her' the day after Jonathon's funeral. He had known she would need a friend, and he had chosen well.

There was one hurdle left to cross, however, and it was broached unexpectedly when Martha said, laughingly;

"You crept up on me pretty well there, last night. How come I didn't hear your footsteps? Was panther-like movement something you learnt in this Fortress of yours?"

Clark pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows and set down his coffee cup in a manner which Martha had come to discover pre-empted yet _another_ revelation.

"Uh, actually, not... quite." He said. "You aren't going to believe me when I tell you this."

Martha laughed with more abandon that she had in twelve long years.

"Clark, over the last six hours I have welcomed you home from a twelve-year sabbatical to the _Arctic_, learnt that you've been spending that twelve years talking to a hologram of your dead father about physics, religion and alien life, and discovered that you get your powers from the sun. I don't think there's anything left you could say that would surprise me."

Clark shrugged his shoulders as if to say 'well, I did warn you', and said;

"Mom, I can fly."

For what felt like the hundredth time that night Martha Kent sat quite still as she waited for the shock to sink in. It seemed she _wasn't_ beyond surprise after all.

"Oh." She said, then nodded. "That explains a lot. I guess it'll save you on flights around the place."

She had meant it as a joke but Clark took it seriously, nodding along.

"And I'm going to Metropolis next week. I've already applied to the _Daily Planet_, I'm just waiting for the reply now."

Martha wondered if she should be offended that, after leaving that Arctic, he had written out a _job application_ before coming to see her, before deciding that his Dad would probably have been quite proud of his forward-thinking.

"The post service is good in the Arctic, then?" She asked lightly, but as she rubbed her eyes Clark didn't laugh, rather took her elbow (he had moved to sit beside her hours ago, after the initial awkwardness of their reunion had worn off) and gradually stood her up.

"Come on, Mom, you're exhausted, you need to get to bed. I should have thought."

"Don't you sleep anymore, then? I remember you could sleep in for hours as a boy..." Her voice was becoming bleary. Damn her age. Twenty, even ten years ago she had been easily pulling all-nighters with the cows during calving season with barely a black mark under her eye to show for it. Now she could hardly lift her own feet. It was a good thing Clark was there, supporting her.

"I do sleep, yes, but not quite as much." He said, as he walked her towards the stairs. When they reached the stairs he easily lifted her up in both of his arms, so that he was carrying her, and took her up the stairs and into her bedroom. As he looked around, she could see the shock on his face at the scarcity of her belongings and the worn state of his old home. She placed a hand on his cheek.

"Don't worry, Clark. Times have been tough, that's all."

He laid her in bed, lips pursing and his brow contracting naively at the injustice of it all.

"When I get a job in Metropolis," he promised fiercely, "I'm sending you half of my pay check."

Martha tried to laugh at just how little he had changed, but sleep was overtaking her. She had one more question to ask, though, before she submitted completely to its beguiling embrace.

"Your powers..." she said, grasping Clark both to convince herself he was really there and to anchor her grip to wakefulness for a few moments more. "How are you going to use them... in journalism?"

He smiled, kissing her on the head. When he responded, he showed no bitterness at his words or the lot which life had given him.

"That's my day job," he said, "in my spare time... well, you'll see." He chuckled, so close to her that she felt rather than heard the low rumble of his amusement. "I'm afraid _that's_ when you'll see my... uh, objectionable suit."

Even in her half-sleeping state, Martha Managed to laugh. She could well imagine what he would do in his 'spare time'. He didn't even mind, she realised; he didn't see it as a sacrifice at all. The size of his heart prevented the sharpness of his mind from acknowledging the enormity of what he was going to give to the world.

"My super boy." She said. "Maybe that's what they should call you, with the S on your suit..." but no, she reminded herself, he was a man now.

"Goodnight, Mom." He said softly, and the last thing of which she was aware before drifting into the warmest slumber she had known for twelve years was of Clark looking out of the window and murmuring, as though to the stars;

"I know why I'm here, now. And it's definitely not to score touchdowns."

He was a good boy and a fine man. Still, she wished the suit wasn't _quite_ so tasteless.

888

**A/N:** Please tell me what you think! Pretty please!


End file.
